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Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne,5 and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood,6 and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.

7 "Look, he is coming with the clouds,"and "every eye will see him,even those who pierced him";and all peoples on earth "will mourn because of him."So shall it be! Amen.

8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."

(Revelation 1:4-8New International Version.)

Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord;let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.

I'm not uncomfortable with the command to put on the other virtues such as love, or the call to walk in peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. But the command to joy makes me comprehensively faint.

I know how difficult these other virtues are and how far I've got to go in becoming Christlike in these areas too.

But all most other aspects of the Spirit seem familiar to me in some measure, except joy.

Joy is the one quality of the Spirit that I feel estranged from and completely lacking. It is the one area of my faith (and maybe that of our Christian subculture) that I've made very little progress in - maybe none at all; maybe negative progress?

And so the command to "rejoice always" is troubling to me, to say the least. The Apostle Paul in fact, in his letter to the Philippians, goes as far as stating that "it is right for me to feel this [joy]..." So by inference it is wrong of me to not rejoice or have joy in Christ for my salvation.

So when I look at Psalm 95:1 and verses like it running throughout the entire Bible, I realize that my current and our modern Christian spirituality is not well. I and probably a whole heap of us are missing a key ingredient of the mature (not normal) Christian life, which to a significant extent means we carry a kind-of spiritual sickness. Our faith is lacking, and weak. We look like malnourished baby Christians.

And this is not an amazing discovery. The New Testament regularly points to people and churches who lack one or even many marks of a complete or mature faith; lovelessness, pride, foolishness and lack of self-control are chief among them.

But what is amazing is that our joylessness is so normal; it is so widespread in our western reformed evangelical subcultures.

Now I don't think that Paul would have believed in completely joyless Christians, and I'm not suggesting for a moment that I or any of my sincere Christian brothers and sisters around me have no joy whatsoever in Christ; we are not devoid of joy, it is just not nearly big enough - it should be a strong and growing and evident mark of the Spirit in our behaviour and lifestyle.

And so there are a two things that Psalm 95:1 remind me of, rebuke me for and correct in me:

1. Joy is a command, just like love and peace and patience and all the other virtues. It is not first a feeling. It is firstly an obedient response of faith; the feeling of joy is subservient to the primary act of faith. It is right to be joyful or rejoice because wholehearted faith in Christ is right, and joy comes from faith in Christ.

And that leads to the second thing that Psalm 95:1 reminds me of:

2. Joy is a response to Christ himself; for who he is (our Rock) and for what he has done for us, me and you (our Salvation). It is when I displace my reliance on him as my Rock by throwing the weight of my trust behind any other (false and counterfeit) confidence or hope or love that I lose joy. It is when I start looking to myself or my things or abilities or achievements or others (or whatever) to justify my existence or prove my worth that I lose joy.

This is why the Psalmist can call on his congregation to "Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation." Because he knows that the remedy of his and every heart is to repent in faith by re-putting our hope in Christ alone; all other ground is sinking sand.

I went ten pin bowling for the first time in 20 years with our family a few weeks back. It reminded me of how hard it is to fix your eyes on the target; nine times out of ten my eyes would wander and fix on my feet or the track itself. Needless to say I didn't score well - but for brief bursts when I could control my focus it was quite thrilling to watch the result!

Gosh I need to learn this lesson, in general! This is exactly what I do in life. I'm always looking everywhere except at what I'm actually (meant to be) aiming for: Christ himself.

Psalm 25:15 (NIV)

My eyes are ever on the Lord,for only he will release my feet from the snare.

My eyes are ever on myself! Or my to-do list, or that nebulous cloud of problems to solve and worries to resolve.

Everyday, every morning and evening and mindful moment, I need to tell the eyes of my heart to look to the only one who can save my feet from their perils.

Christ is the only one who can keep my feet from falling; he's the only one who can release them from the life traps that ensnare them - the "worries and troubles of life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desire for other things" that come in and choke the seed of God's Word in my heart, keeping me from fruitfulness; keeping me from the results of the Spirit.

Joe, control those wayward eyes! Keep them on Jesus! If you look at anything else, you'll suffer for it.

'My eyes are ever on Christ, for only he will release my feet from the sin that so easily entangles.'

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Christian Reflections

The Briefing

Phillip Jensen

Pete Woodcock & Cornerstone

I’m attracted to big ideas and new thoughts. Jesus himself was considered an astounding thinker in his time. But today we tend not to realize how our hopes in development, science and reform have nothing on the promises he made. About Christianity, we think the world of the twentieth-century is a different world. But it is about Christian things and the Christian religion that we should be turning our attention. Not only has Jesus changed our world already since the first Christmas and the first Easter, but he promises to do it further, radically further. I’m talking about more than the fact that Christian beliefs have shaped modern society [the reformation for example fueled the industrial revolution]. I also recognize the perception that Christian church attendance is in decline. But Christianity itself continues to grow. That’s because the Christian way is much more than Sunday attendance. What is Christianity and what is Christian or to put it precisely, ‘Christ’-like-living? This is not a silly question; particularly because of the way that our modern secular culture of Christmas-consumerism has clouded our clarity. That is one of many reasons why this site exists. Talking Christianity talks all about Christianity and about Christian thinking because actually what we need most in the twentieth-century it is a review of the basics of a Christ-centered view of the world. And, believe it or not, that makes our subject all about church too. That’s because, what is the Church? What actually is the church of God? Church is not a building or a meeting. The church is God’s people, his community united in Christ himself. That is, the church itself is the Christian people, all united together by common faith in Jesus. In that sense, this site is all about church because it is all about the Christian people. I hope by sharing Christian views about the world to give a window into the Christian view of the world; a window that I hope actually gives a view of Jesus, a view of Christ himself. The event of Christmas and the calendar tradition of Easter have become tools for marketers to fuel our commitment as consumers. It is a strange scenario in a secular society that swears no allegiance to the Lord himself and in fact more often than not today we only hear mention of Jesus Christ when someone in our workplaces or bus malls can find no other phrase more appropriate for a curse. Who is Jesus that his name today is heard in every corner of our world, on the lips of both those who bless one another and those who curse? Of course, the Christians call Jesus Christ by that title because they also call him the son of God, a phrase that is used not only by the Christian but by the Bible too; but what does that mean? But just as important in asking who is Jesus Christ is another related question, where is Jesus? And another more basic question might be what is Jesus; a question followed closely by who was Jesus when he came. That’s why this site talks all about Jesus, and not just about him, but also how Jesus has changed the world and will in fact change the world more fundamentally still. This is the message of the Gospel, the gospel of Jesus, or the good news of Christ Jesus. One of the central questions we ask on this site is both what is gospel and what is the gospel? How is the gospel message, that is very closely associated with the four gospels found in the beginning of the second section of the Bible, the New Testament, how is this good news of any significance for us today as modern people? One big difference is that it is a free gospel, unlike all the other gospels that exist in the world. The message at the heart for the Christians is a true story of the free gift of God’s forgiveness through a man like no other, Jesus. In the Holy Bible, as we open the pages of Scripture, we discover the facts of who this man was and who he is now, today. It will take some bible study. Of course we might ask which bible? As there are many gospels there are many bibles. The word bible means book, but the Christian book that has been called The Book is the collection of 66 books from the Scriptures of Israel (the Old Testament) and the collection of writings of the first Christians, which we have in the New Testament. Put together my many authors over hundreds of years across continents and cultures, it is the bibles view of itself is that it is the word of God to us even today. Who is God? Where do we find God? We in fact need to do little more than open up a book. But where in the bible do we find God, we might ask? Actually it is the message of the book as a whole that we have been describing as the gospel. Every part of the bible reveals God, as does the whole. So what is the Bible? In the Bible and by the Bible, God speaks of himself to us. Bible scripture and every bible verse together reveals God as we listen and understand what he has done in the past and what he has said about those things. That’s why this blog talks all about Bible and gives bible verses at every point. One of the biggest questions people ask typing in their search is help me find God. To find God the Bible says is like to find gold and with it silver and all types of costly stones as well. What is God? Surprisingly, the Bible in fact says that God Is. It’s more than he ‘just is’ but that is part of it. He is the only one who always is; the only I Am. Who is God? Part of the answer the Bible gives relates to the fact that God has revealed himself as the God of. He is the God of certain people, for example Abraham, Isaac and Jacob of ancient Israel. He revealed himself as the God of Israel. More than that, we know him as the God of Jesus. How is God the one of these people of the past, and to be so now too? Where is God? Again and again people go searching for God, going to the internet search and praying Help me God with their keyboard. We search asking God where are you? God is in heaven but he reveals us to us as God the Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is good and he has shown his love to us. That’s why this site promotes the love of God as revealed already in what he has done and has been written down for us. I love God and I want the Kingdom of God to come and the will of God to be done in this world and with this world. That’s why I talk all about God, or what might be called theology, the study of God. I want to promote thinking about God, and by focusing on God I want to highlight the benefits of the Bible’s theology for our lives and future as people.